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Friday, January 27, 2012

Today, January 27, 2012 at about 15:25 UT, the asteroid designated 2012 BX34 will pass only 59,044 km (36,750 miles) or about ~0.2 lunar distance (or 0.0004 AU) above the Earth's surface. The asteroid was discovered by Catalina Sky Survey with a 0.68-m Schmidt + CCD on January 25, 2012 at magnitude ~20.

According to its absolute magnitude (H=27.6) this asteroid has an estimated diameter of roughly 8-18 meters, so it is very small. We have been able to follow-up this object few hours ago remotely from the GRAS Observatory (near Mayhill, NM) through a 0.10-m f/5 reflector + CCD.

At the moment of our images from New Mexico on January 27, 11:04UT, "2012 BX34" was moving at about ~318.86 "/min and its magnitude was ~15. At the moment of its close approach around 15UT of today, 2012 BX34 will be bright as magnitude ~13.8 and moving at ~1810 "/min.

Below you can see a single 120-seconds exposure showing the object as a ~11-arcminutes trail (due to its fast speed). Click on the thumbnail to see a bigger version:

While this is an animation showing the object moving among the field stars. Each image was a 120-second exposure. Click on the thumbnail to see a bigger version:

While there is no cause for concern, this is one of the closest approaches recorded. The table below shows the top 20 closest approaches by NEOs (Near-Earth Objects) sorted by nominal distance. The table has been computed on the NASA/Neo-JPL website (the event that took 2008 TC3 into the earth's atmosphere is not included). Click on the thumbnail to see a bigger version:

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Below you can find a selection of some of the comets we imaged in the last 2 weeks using the 2-meter telescopes of Faulkes (F65 & E10 MPC codes) and the La Palma-Liverpool (J13 MPC code). Click on each image for a bigger version.

Prompted by an alert of A. Diepvens on comet-images mailing list, on
January 03 we perfomed some follow-up of C/2010 G2 (Hill); we confirm
that this comet was experiencing a bright phase. Co-adding of 9
unfiltered exposures, 15 seconds each, obtained remotely from the Siding
Spring-Faulkes Telescope South on 2012, January 03.46 through a 2.0-m
f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD reveals the comet as a bright featureless
star-like object of magnitude 13.2 N

Comets & Asteroids news

Welcome to our Astronomy blog, devoted in particular to Comets & Asteroids and related topics. This blog is maintained by Italian amateur astronomer Ernesto Guido, particularly active in the study of the small bodies of the Solar System.